Source of Harry Reid’s nasty smear of Romney last year was … Jon Huntsman’s father?

posted at 6:01 pm on November 1, 2013 by Allahpundit

I’m shocked — not that the Huntsmans would knife Romney in the back but that Reid would have the minimal integrity to actually base his smear on something that someone told him. I was a thousand percent sure that he’d made up the “Romney doesn’t pay taxes” thing whole cloth for funsies, to make Romney sweat at a moment when Democrats were pressing him on the issue. Let it be noted for the record, then: He may be an absolute A-hole but Harry Reid’s not in the habit of falsely accusing people of wrongdoing unprompted. It takes at least a modicum of prompting to get him to make that false accusation.

The important question now: This isn’t going to derail the Huntsman 2016 express, is it?

The source of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) infamous claim during the 2012 presidential campaign that Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes in 10 years was Jon Huntsman Sr., the father of fellow GOP rival Jon Huntsman, according to a new book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann called “Double Down.”

Reid bashed Romney with the claim, which he said came from a Republican and a Bain Capital investor, during the summer of 2012 as the former Mass. governor repeatedly refused to disclose the tax documents.

Huntsman Sr denies it, saying, “These fellows who wrote this book, they dwell on falsehoods and false rumors. They’re nothing but supermarket, tabloid trash. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.” He was, however, a suspect from the beginning, partly because he’s friends with Reid, partly because he’s partners with a former Bain Capital director (Reid claimed his source was a Bain investor), and partly because, despite his support for Romney after his son dropped out, Huntsman’s relationship with Romney has been intermittently chilly over the years. This WaPo piece from early 2011 chronicles the sporadic nastiness, from Huntsman Sr complaining after Mitt had won the job to take over the 2002 Olympics that he was “politically driven” and “very, very slick and fast-talking” to Huntsman Jr earning Romney’s wrath in 2006 by endorsing McCain after allegedly promising his support to Romney. Huntsman Sr’s wife told WaPo flat-out at the time that she wouldn’t support Romney if he ran for president for reasons she refused to specify. Huntsman Jr played rough with him at different points during the campaign too, once dismissing him as being in “the hip pocket of Wall Street.” Go figure that Huntsman Sr fell under suspicion.

In fact, here’s what he told Greg Sargent last year when he first denied that he was Reid’s source. Does this sound like a man who’d badmouth Mitt Romney behind his back?

“I feel very badly that Mitt won’t release his taxes and won’t be fair with the American people,” Huntsman told me. In a reference to Romney’s father, who pioneered the release of returns as a presidential candidate, Huntsman said: “I loved George. He always said, [release] your [tax returns] for at least 10 or 12 years.”…

“Mr. Romney ought to square with the American people and release his taxes like any other candidate,” Huntsman said. “I’ve supported Mitt all along. I wish him well. But I do think he should release his income taxes.”

To think: If not for Reid’s mystery source and the smear that he propagated, Romney might have won … a few hundred more votes, maybe? Meh.

Here’s Abby Huntsman, Jon Jr’s daughter and new co-host of “The Cycle,” encouraging Romney’s son to primary Mike Lee in Utah because, I guess, even a Romney is better than a conservative. Exit fun fact: When Jon Jr dropped out of the race early last year, he complained that it had “degenerated into an onslaught of negative and personal attacks.”

Comments

I don’t trust anyone in the Huntsman clan. They are anti-conservative and they love playing the part of “Republican who agrees that Republicans are bad” for the benefit of a liberal audience wanting to be told how bad Republicans supposedly are.

John Huntsman, Jr. is just a meeker, skinnier version of Chris Christie. People like to talk about how “charismatic” Christie supposedly is, but I just think he’s a bigmouth. Chris Christie = John Huntsman+John McCain+Charlie Crist all rolled into one. We ought to remember that as we read about what lying traitors the Huntsmans are.

Here’s Abby Huntsman, Jon Jr’s daughter and new co-host of “The Cycle,” encouraging Romney’s son to primary Mike Lee in Utah because, I guess, even a Romney is better than a conservative.

I saw some of Lee’s kinder and gentler talking points a few days ago. He talked about issues like flex time at the office. Is this an issue the government should get involved with, conservatives?

Anyhoo, I figured Lois Lerner was probably the source. I wasn’t aware that tax returns were shared with partners but I guess I was wrong about that. BTW, Glenn “Republicans are just as bad as Democrats” Beck loves him some Huntsman, Sr.

I emailed Main St Partnership a couple of times this week. They are the group who is targeting conservative Republicans. I wrote various things like “Let’s kick the Tea Party out of our Rep. Party,
etc. If they win the primary let’s campaign for the Democrat.

To date, they have not refuted any of my statements, no matter how ridiculous. I don’t think they will campaign for the Dems, but who knows?

I want the growth of govt. reversed. The Dems want it to grow faster. The Rep. Estab. wants govt. to grow, just not as fast as the Dems.

I wonder how many votes the Rep. Estab. will get once conservatives realize they are being taken for a ride? They call us whacko birds, chuckleheads, and worse. Wonder how long before they begin to imitate the Dems and call us terrorists, etc.?

Of course both Romney and Hunstman were numbskulls when it came to politics. Lets look at how they handled one issue, global warming, as an illustration of their unbridled idiocy.

First, lets stipulate that Hunstman actually wanted to win the nomination, and thought he could do it. Now Huntsman made a lot of noise at the debates and elsewhere that he continued to ardently believe in a key issue taht the leftists push: global warming. I remember an interview he was giving on conservative talk radio where he was questioned on how people are upset about his climate change stance, and you a heard a rather befuddled Hunstman, as a listener you realized that it was new news to Huntsman that his gwarming stance was causing such a negative reaction. Huntsman just seemed oblivious to the base, and to dramatic changes in the opinions of the base that occurred from 2009 to 2011. Huntsman seemed to think the base was stuck in 2008, which was a time where Huntsman’s global warming position may have (barely) passed muster with the R voters. Not any more.

Same with Romney. He didn’t understand the new sentiments driving the base. In June of 2012 Romney was still talking about his desire to curtail CO2 emissions. That got a huge negative reaction, and Romney did try to do some quick revisioning of his position. But Romney never came clean in any full disavowal of the leftists’ dubious global warming theory. Worst of all was at the end of Romney’s convention speech, where he said something like “Obama wants to keep the sea from rising from global warming, [but] I want to help your pocketbook.” Hugely bad. Romney again didn’t say that gwarming theory was wrong, but instead implied that he would rather embrace selfish pocketbook goals at the expense of the world’s destruction. Idiotic. To think that a voter is that selfish??? No, the voter needs to know that the gwarming theory is bs, and that rich and poor alike are being deeply hurt by the costly policies of the out of control greens. But Romney… was a political dunce.

Why didn’t we have any decent candidates to oppose Romney? Maybe Romney had done something to stack the deck in his favor.

the Huntsman thing was strange from the get go. The leftist press said barryhi had pulled a coup when he called huntsman to china..and that he was a big name for 2012. Huh? Zero name recognition and he was supposed to be a putative leader of the GOP?

lots of back staging here. leftists doing political theater inside the GOP, using power hunger progressives to do the job.

this county is sunk. the GOP is rotting as we watch…the rot spreads from the head. at one point i would have said try to fix it…but it is not fixable. Encourage the prog rs to migrate to No Labels. and we’ll keep the anti-slavery party for our own

we are at the point that we need to salvage some remnant of freedom and individual dignity

— Jon Huntsman — who served as ambassador to China before jumping into the 2012 race — hosted political meetings while on the federal government’s payroll as an ambassador. Huntsman and his wife Mary Kaye interviewed strategists Jon Weaver and Nick Ayers while back in D.C. on a vacation from Beijing. Mary Kaye Huntsman had been in touch with Weaver from months, using the codeword “HE” to refer to her husband in emails that were political in nature, according to “Double Down.” Weaver took the meeting with the couple as a sign to move forward with the campaign, setting up a PAC while Huntsman continued to serve as ambassador. Federal law tightly controls what political activities federal employees can undertake.

I used to hold the father in high esteem, for his business prowess, honesty in business, charity, cancer hospital in Salt Lake City, like no other, handshakes for solid business deals, into the multi-billions, keeping his business word, even if he could get way more money…

Here’s Abby Huntsman, Jon Jr’s daughter and new co-host of “The Cycle,” encouraging Romney’s son to primary Mike Lee in Utah because, I guess, even a Romney is better than a conservative. Exit fun fact: When Jon Jr dropped out of the race early last year, he complained that it had “degenerated into an onslaught of negative and personal attacks.”

To Hades, all of you. The youngen are trained to be as charlatanic as the old ones. Slow Hades!

This just goes to show you how far the establishment will go. Romney was the establishment candidate, yet Huntsman, (let’s never forget his son was Obama’s first ambassador to China) felt he had to stab him in the back with this. The establishment doesn’t care if their candidate wins, just so long as they retain their power. In this case, I’m guessing it was more that sonny boy didn’t make the grade. Could be he tried to ramble on in Chinese during a debate and it didn’t work.

There’s a reason I couldn’t support Huntsman in the primary, besides just how far to the left he was. The man and his family, left a horribly bad taste in my mouth. I take a close look at the families of candidates, since they tend to give you a decent idea of a candidates nature. The Huntsman struck me as rich dysfunctional liberals that were badly acting a role. I didn’t get that off the Romney’s.

Earlier in the week Eliana Johnson at National review detailed the results of IRS leaks about the National Organization for Marriage to its political opponent, the pro-gay marriage Human Rights Campaitn. Most outrageous is how the the law protects the identify of the illegal leaker. Investigation IDs IRS Leaker:

I still think that Reid had access to IRS data via the Dem network of political operatives.

onlineanalyst on November 1, 2013 at 6:48 PM

I always thot so too. Reid kept pressing the issue. I think he had IRS info, but couldn’t reveal that. So he wanted Romney to cave and release the tax returns and then Reid & the Dems would use that against him.

Why didn’t we have any decent candidates to oppose Romney? Maybe Romney had done something to stack the deck in his favor.
anotherJoe on November 1, 2013 at 6:38 PM

There were spoilers to reduce camera time, and to dilute the vote. IMHO Huntsman was a spoiler. He was there for himself, but usable. Billionaire Adelson (amnesty, abortion, national health) was Newt’s major donor. Newt shot himself in the foot supporting amnesty. Adelson was also huge Romney donor.

It is obvious that any rumors about Romney’s taxes came from Lois Lerners office.

Jon M. Huntsman Sr., who is in town for a gala Friday night, said a new book’s claim that he told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2012 that Mitt Romney had not paid a decade’s worth of taxes was untrue.

He went on to call the book’s claim, “supermarket tabloid trash,” and said that he did not know the authors of the book and had not spoken to them.

“I have no way of knowing if Mitt Romney did or did not pay his taxes,” Huntsman said Friday.

I don’t trust anyone in the Huntsman clan. They are anti-conservative and they love playing the part of “Republican who agrees that Republicans are bad” for the benefit of a liberal audience wanting to be told how bad Republicans supposedly are.

bluegill on November 1, 2013 at 6:05 PM
Allah, you should look into trying to steal the writer Tony Lee from Breitbart.

He’s great. Always on top of things. The Palinistas would also love him. Anyway, he’s the one who covered this story yesterday for them.

I’m acquainted with an extended member of the Huntsman family. Long before the Huntsman family became a national name I was painted a picture through this acquaintance of a very successful but overly-controlling, sometimes-vindictive patriarch. Years ago a friend of mine used to joke that if our mutual acquaintance ever disappeared, Senior would be the first person he would suspect. I believe the Huntsman family is a collection of complex and somewhat troubled personalities. I believe Jon Huntsman, Sr. does a lot of good things and has a good heart, but is also very emotional and competitive to an extreme level. I believe he’s quick to anger and slow to forgive and forget. I find Harry Reid the lowest of the political life forms; soulless and nearly devoid of any integrity. During the election I also believed he had fabricated the Romney tax smear but with what I’ve long-concluded about Sr., in spite of his recent denials, I consider the possibility that he was the source of the rumor to be credible. Regardless, if there truly was a source, I believe Harry Reid knew the rumor to be untrue.

With regards to character, I have to mention that Mitt Romney, unlike Reid and Jon Huntsman, Sr., I believe to be as simple and as good a man as you will find for someone who has achieved so much. Many armchair pundits like to lump the political player’s personalities and characters all together (I’m including Huntsman, Sr.) but in spite of some differences I’ve had with Romney over the past 20 years or so that I have followed him, I’ve found him to be exceptionally honorable—as much as you will find for a politician. Over the past year I’ve had some long discussions with another acquaintance who worked on his presidential campaign and what I’ve learned from him has reinforced that belief. For every Mitt Romney in national politics, there are a hundred or more Huntsmans who look at all competing participants as unforgivable adversaries. Until the electorate can learn to discern the two, politics will be a nasty enterprise.

Huntsman, Jr., thought he could waltz in and get the nomination handed to him because he’s(fill in the blanks). He didn’t have the will to fight for it and dropped out. This is no country for old rinos or Huntsman Jrs who won’t fight.

I doubt you will ever see this but if Ms. Lerner said it wouldn’t she have to be extra careful that it was true, given her position with the IRS, or why even say it? Since I don’t think it is true and Mr. Huntsman’s rather weaselly “I have no way of knowing if Mitt Romney did or did not pay his taxes,” Huntsman said Friday, he seems like a good prospect for the leak.

John Huntsman, Jr. is just a meeker, skinnier version of Chris Christie. People like to talk about how “charismatic” Christie supposedly is, but I just think he’s a bigmouth. Chris Christie = John Huntsman+John McCain+Charlie Crist all rolled into one. We ought to remember that as we read about what lying traitors the Huntsmans are.

bluegill on November 1, 2013 at 6:09 PM

Yup. They’re all power-hungry dirtbags. Do not put your faith in men (or women).